If your favorite holiday weekend is the one featuring Memorial Day, here’s some cold water to pour on your already rainy barbecue:

Of all the holiday weekends that American road warriors celebrate, the one honoring the war dead is the most dangerous.

Just take a look at the traffic record for 2015, the most recent year for up-to-date national statistics, when U.S. roadways claimed 312 lives on Memorial Day weekend. That’s many more than Christmas (231), New Year’s (245) and Thanksgiving (255).

By all means, enjoy your beer and hot dog, but bear in mind that the 101 days of summer mean more than beaches, bicycles and booze.

The carnage that begins in late May keeps rolling.

Here’s the toll taken for when we celebrate American independence on July 4: 307 lives.

And the 101-day party usually doesn’t end well either on that September weekend when we honor working men and women.

A lot of them didn’t make it back to work on Tuesday when loved ones began making funeral arrangements for 308 drivers, passengers, bicyclists and pedestrians.

If you’ve managed to read this party-pooper message this far, maybe you can endure the worst part:

A study by the AAA Foundation for Safety showed deaths of drivers under the age of 20 rose 16 percent during the 100 days following Memorial Day. That figure spirals past 40 percent when other drivers, passengers and pedestrians become victims in teen-related crashes, especially when other teens are in the car with a young driver.

All in all, 10 more people die each day on the road from Memorial Day through the Labor Day weekend.

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Over the Memorial Day weekend alone last year, New Jersey State Police counted 15 deaths, including a pedestrian in Fort Lee and a passenger who was killed on Getty Avenue in Paterson.

So, if you have any doubts about why police are particularly unforgiving this time of year when the Click It or Ticket crackdown is underway, here’s the answer: Studies show more than half of all traffic deaths involving occupants under 21 were unrestrained. The figure for the 21-to-44-year-old crowd isn’t much better.

Add distracted-driving issues to the mix and it becomes clear to many people that it’s not unforgiving police or towns greedy for ticket revenue who make traffic such a deadly chore.

It’s the un-belted, unwary people inside the cars who need a wake-up call – or maybe just a little more time reading the driver's manual

Ugh! For most of us know-it-alls, it might be too late. Habits are set.

If you've read this far, you’re ready for some positive news, and here it is:

Teens from more than 60 high schools gathered at Great Adventure in Jackson on Thursday for the annual “U Got Brains” competition organized by the New Jersey Brain Injury Alliance.

Student teams of 10 or more from each school competed for driving simulators – gadgets that help them learn the rules of the road in a way that’s a bit more hands-on than what most of us remember.

To qualify, they had to produce video public service announcements, posters and outreach programs that brought the driver's manual alive. With teacher-advisor assistance, they invited guest lecturers to speak, they put on skits, wore outrageous costumes – anything to bring home the safety message about seat belts, cellphones, vehicle maintenance and a few reminders about friends and relatives they’ve lost.

In a comparable program, the trauma unit at Hackensack University Medical Center challenges more than 20 local high schools to find ways to bring road safety to life in Bergen County. On Wednesday, cash safety awards were presented to schools in Cresskill, Elmwood Park and several other towns that had stationed monitors in school parking lots to tabulate seat-belt use.

To ready themselves for the next unannounced monitoring, students had to do more than read the manual. They produced videos and posters that qualified their schools for driver-ed teaching tools.

In each example, insurance companies — New Jersey Manufacturers for U Got Brains and State Farm in Hackensack — underwrote these efforts.

“It’s one of the ways we keep everybody energized about road safety,” said organizer Meliam Gonzales, the hospital’s injury prevention coordinator.

Do programs like these work?

Nearly all the participating high schools showed more than 70 percent improvement in seat-belt usage. Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township and Indian Hills High School in Oakland took top honors with 99 percent.

Traffic safety experts believe these initiatives save lives. Last year, 21 drivers under 21 and 17 teen passengers were killed on New Jersey roads. So far this year, four teen drivers and four passengers have died in crashes.